Please Pass Me the Fruit
Please Pass Me the Fruit Galatians 5:1, 13-25 Christian Community Presbyterian Church, Bowie, Maryland June 26, 2022 H ave you heard the tongue-in-cheek definition of a Puritan? It’s a person who harbors the fear that somewhere someone is enjoying him- or her- or theirself. All of us happy-go-lucky Christians lack immunity to that kind of thinking. No vaccination and no N95 mask is to going to prevent our suspicions that someone is having more fun than we are, with the underlying, sometimes not-so-well suppressed coveting of that fun. No one has ever done a scientific poll about this, but my gut feeling is that of the two lists which Paul offers in this passage from Galatians, it’s the list of “no-no’s” that get more attention. After all, isn’t one of the first words we learn, “No”? Paul wasn’t attempting to be exhaustive in drawing up either list; you can imagine the “et cetera” at the end of either one. He was trying to illustrate the kinds of behaviors against which or for which